Immigration issues, restrictions on the rise

The American dream could be slowly turning into an American nightmare.

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, 39, 970 unaccompanied minors from Mexico and Central America have been detained along the Mexico-United States border in fiscal year 2015.

With tighter border regulations being discussed as part of the upcoming presidential election, it could mean more Hispanic and Central Americans losing their chance at a better life, or deporting those who think they have already found it.

Peter Haschke, assistant professor of political science, said it takes a lot for countries, including the United States, to allow immigrants or refugees into it’s territory.

“Somebody has to try and actually kill you in order for you to be able to come into our country,” Haschke said.

According to a study by the Pew Research Center, 8.1 million undocumented immigrants constitute 5 percent of the total U.S. labor force. There are more than 11 million illegal immigrants currently in the U.S. Of these undocumented immigrants, 5.9 million are Mexican.

In a Pew survey, 78 percent of American adults said immigrants take low-paying jobs Americans do not want.

“Our refugees are not allowed to work, they have to struggle for their integration,” Haschke said. “The number one integrator is work. Once you start to work, you have to pick up a language. If we don’t allow those individuals to work, they don’t have the incentive to integrate.”

In a 60 Minutes interview, Donald Trump said his platform includes the construction of a wall between Mexico and the United States, and the deportation of more than 11 million immigrants.

“Romney was saying the exact same thing just four years ago,” Haschke said, “and Romney was clearly not piggy-backing on Trump, if anything it is both Trump and Romney piggybacking on what the voters want.”

Jimmy Borges, a criminal justice student at AB-Tech from Leicester, said there is always a way around, under or through a wall.

In a Gallup poll, 58 percent of adults said they would vote for a candidate who viewed immigration as an important factor.

The Latino vote will comprise of over 27 million people in the 2016 election. With that increase, the topic of immigration reform becomes more important, according to the Center for American Progress.

Borges spoke about the Latino vote and its rising influence.

“In the near future, the WASP vote is going to be outnumbered,” Borges said. “Okay, maybe not outnumbered, but the Latino vote is going to have much more influence than it does now.”

Haschke said Trump and the GOP are trying the best they can to make everyone believe illegal immigrants, including children and teenagers, are a greater problem than they are.

An assignment at Erwin High School recently sparked an argument between the school and the Hispanic community.

Some of the designs displayed remarks expressing offensive statements geared toward the Hispanic community. These included demands like, “Go home,” “Kick out the brown” and “Send the illegals back.”

Elizabeth Ford-Ferguson, an AP politics teacher at T.C. Roberson High School, said immigration is a problem that needs addressing in schools in a more palatable way.

“To not talk about it, not discuss it, not to bring it up in the classroom is to kind of deny its existence,” Ferguson said.

Sidebar

Jimmy Borges’ parents both came to the United States from Mexico during the 1980s, for his mother it took two trips across the border for her to attain residency.

“The first time, when she was 14, nobody would hire her because she looked too young,” Borges said. “Then she came back when she was 19 and that was when she crossed the border floating on a tire down the river.”

Borges said both of his parents applied for their visa in 1996 and are finishing the process this year.

“The visa process takes decades,” Borges said. “Four of my family members are still in waiting and they’ve been here since my parents.”

Borges also said his mother nearly died trying to make it into the U.S. on her second trip over the border.

“My mom was shot at. After floating down the river on a tire, she crossed through farmer-owned fields,” Borges said. “Farmers were mean, so they would shoot at immigrants running through the cornfields, my mother included.”

“President Obama took office vowing to go after unscrupulous employers who hire illegal immigrants, but worksite audits have plunged over the last year and a half, according to a report released Tuesday by the Center for Immigration Studies, tumbling along with the rest of immigration enforcement.”

The Left-Leaning LA Times posted an article that shows that the Obama administration, the Illegal Alien lobby, and the major media outlets have been in collusion to depict the “high” deportation numbers. The exact opposite is true since the beginning of the current President’s policy. Interior deportation has and will be lower than 1973 rates. This is leading towards more people overstaying their visas and currently, more Illegal Alien minors crossing the border. Obama has just recently instructed border patrol to not turn back those Illegal Aliens on record as having entered illegally as priors, but to let them pass IF they don’t have a major criminal record. After the first Illegal Entry, it is a felony each time thereafter.

Even Obama in 2011, called the deportation numbers deceptive when talking to Hispanic voters. President Obama said statistics that show his administration is on track to deport more illegal immigrants than the Bush administration are misleading.

“The statistics are a little deceptive,” he said Wednesday in an online discussion aimed at Hispanic voters.”

“If you are a run-of-the-mill immigrant here illegally, your odds of getting deported are close to zero — it’s just highly unlikely to happen,” John Sandweg, until recently the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement

“The refocus in law enforcement efforts has effectively protected 9.6 million of the United States’ estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants from deportation, the report found. In all, a full implementation of Obama’s changes would reduce annual deportations to approximately 25,000…”

Ms. Saldana, director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), says in testimony prepared for the House Judiciary Committee that the dramatic drop in deportations is a reflection of a trickier set of circumstances and pressures from all sides.

She said she had to pull agents off their regular duties during last summer’s illegal immigrant surge at the border, which meant fewer people focusing on deporting the longtime illegal immigrants living in the interior of the U.S. And she said the lack of cooperation from states, counties and cities when agents ask them to hold an illegal immigrant for pickup has also hindered efforts.”

“East Coast began calling Atlanta refugee agencies several months ago looking for legal immigrants to come to Alabama for a year, said Mbanfu,
refugee employment director for Lutheran Services in Atlanta. He said the company would have taken as many refugees as he could refer. The agency connected East Coast with refugees who had been in the country
three to five years, he said.”

‘When federal agents descended on six meatpacking plants owned by Swift & Co. in December 2006, they rounded up nearly 1,300 suspected illegal immigrants that made up about 10% of the labor force at the plants.

But the raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents did not cripple the company or the plants. In fact, they were back up and running at full staff within months by replacing those removed with a significant number of native-born Americans, according to a report by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS).

“Whenever there’s an immigration raid, you find white, black and legal immigrant labor lining up to do those jobs that Americans will supposedly not do,” said Swain, who teaches law and political science.”

“First, the benefits of immigration to the population already here are small.
” But as Mr. Hanson explains in his paper, reasonable calculations suggest that we’re talking about very small numbers, perhaps as little as 0.1 percent of GDP.

“My second negative point is that immigration reduces the wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants. That’s just supply and demand…

“Finally, the fiscal burden of low-wage immigrants is also pretty clear. ”

“I write to express my concern regarding reports that you plan on issuing an executive order that purports to grant legal status and work authorization to millions of illegal immigrants after the November elections. My concerns center around the effect such grant of legal status will have on two subsets of American workers: low-skilled workers: particularly low-skilled black workers, and high-skilled STEM workers.”

Here’s the US Commission on Civil Rights’ (USCCR) case against illegal immigration:

The Impact of Illegal Immigration on the Wages and Employment Opportunities of Black Workers (all quoted directly)

Illegal immigration to the United States in recent decades has tended to depress both wages and employment rates for low-skilled American citizens, a disproportionate number of whom are black men (p3).

Dr. Hanson‘s coauthored research suggested that a 10 percent immigrant-induced increase in the labor supply is associated with a 4 percent decrease in black wages, a 3.5 percent decrease in the black employment rate, and a 0.8 percent increase in the black incarceration rate (p5).

These adjustments account for about 40 percent of the overall 18 percent decline in black employment rates and 10 of the 20 percentage point increase in the incarceration rate of black high school dropouts over the same period. Dr. Hanson noted that this influx reduced the employment rate of low- skill black men by eight percentage points (p6).

In both his written and oral testimony, Professor Briggs stated that no issue has negatively ―affected the economic well-being of African Americans more than immigration. … Dr. Briggs viewed such losses as a denial of basic civil rights and economic opportunity (p7).

Dr. Briggs stated that about 12 million illegal immigrants are currently in the U.S. labor market, … and that in his view, further legalization of such immigrants with family reunification would be economically devastating to low-wage workers of all races and black workers in particular(p8).

Dr. Briggs also stated that the inflow of immigrants has resulted in low-skilled wages not rising over time. He viewed the reduction of both wages and jobs as a massive violation of the civil rights of all low-skilled workers, and of black workers in particular. He recommended, therefore, that the federal government
should adhere to the findings of the U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, chaired by the late Congresswoman Barbara Jordan (D-TX): ―People who should get in, do get in; people who should not get in, are kept out; and people who are judged deportable, are required to leave (p9).

Dr. Briggs objected strongly to what he viewed as the use of public policy to drive down wages artificially. Dr. Jaynes agreed on that point, noting that this is indeed a civil rights issue, since such policy was being used to trample on the rights of all workers by driving down wages and avoiding employment rights. Vice Chair Thernstrom asked whether “artificial” was the correct word. Dr. Briggs responded that it was, since deliberate failure to enforce the law was responsible for the wage suppression, and such action was indefensible (p13).

An Atlantic Monthly article that shows that most economists’ thinking that an increased influx of immigrants provides more jobs for Americans is FALSE and does harm jobs for US workers and the economy:

“First, the benefits of immigration to the population already here are small.
” But as Mr. Hanson explains in his paper, reasonable calculations suggest that we’re talking about very small numbers, perhaps as little as 0.1 percent of GDP.

“My second negative point is that immigration reduces the wages of domestic workers who compete with immigrants. That’s just supply and demand…

“Finally, the fiscal burden of low-wage immigrants is also pretty clear. ”

Also, it is patently untrue that “immigrants” are the solution to low rate of start-ups: